Wildheart of the Month | Stephanie

Time for a brand new Wildheart of the Month (WOM)! Every month we interview one of our Wildhearts. We ask them about their Crossfit journey, their day job, their favorite movements and about some other goofy stuff. This month our WOM is Stephanie Roest (32), a youth care worker - behavior coach, and in her spare time volunteers at the foundation 'The forgotten child' (Het Vergeten Kind) for the last five years where she organizes 'Heppie' camps in the summer for children living in poverty and/or have special needs. She is also one of the very early members who have witnessed the growth of CrossFit Wildhearts and has been a big Wildheart supporter since day one!

Reality check

My first class was in March 2014 at the old location in Delfshaven when CrossFit Wildhearts was called Sixforty and when I was under the impression that I had a pretty well foundation of fitness... well that class turned out to be a big reality check where I have lost 5 out of my 9 unicorn lives. After the warming-up I was already crushed and after the workout I couldn't even tell the coach how much I 'enjoyed' the class. It took me about 2 weeks to recover from that single workout (physically and mentally) and it made me feel real humble. The thought of me challenging myself during that workout was so exciting, that I decided to challenge myself even more and sign up to become the fittest version of myself. That's when and where I decided I wanted to do at least 640 workouts at Sixforty and not stop before I would hit that number.

It’s a lifestyle

Setting that big of a goal, knowing back than I was more of a couch potato and my exercise routine only included romantic walks towards the refrigerator, I needed to set small goals in between to stay motived. This turned out in me celebrating, together with the Wildheart coaches, my every 100th workout that I survived. I have accomplished my ultimate goal back in 2014, participating in 640 workouts and still going strong and having fun working out.

At the moment I have done over 800 workouts but at some point..I’ve stopped counting, because doing CrossFit has become a great part of my life.

I love to clean (... and jerk)

My all time favorite movement is the Clean & Jerk or any barbell cycle movement! I just 'get' the movement and love the feeling of performing a heavy Clean & Jerk as fast as I can. The workout I just totally dread is... Kelly! It’s my least favorite workout which involves an insane amount of running, box jumps and wall ball shots. Running is not my thing (only if it involves pizza), box jumps still scare the sh*t out of me from time to time and wall ball shots... yeah, are just wall ball shots. You get it right! I won't avoid the workout but I will do my absolute best to go as slow as possible haha. Which is also a challenge since my fellow Wildhearts always inspire me to push myself as hard as I can! *Fist-bump for them*

Favorite Wildheart memory

I have a top 640 actually, but my number one is definitely the last personal training session with Coach Georgios (which I have won back at the old location in 2014/2015, yeah for me). I remember that during the last session he’d made me go through a grueling workout of 4 rounds of “hell” including flipping heavy tires, slamming things, too much burpees, running and more of these exciting movements... not! At the end of round 4 he just smiled and challenged me (...told me) that I had to do a bonus round.... I panicked and thought, but how, I can't? Didn't you just see I already died in the first 4 rounds... But Georgios insisted and kept motivating me. Afterwards I was so proud of myself that I hadn’t give up and that it showed me that I could achieve anything if I just set my mind to it. It also took me towards a new level of fitness which I wasn't willing to give up on anymore. Because of that experience I can honestly be super happy and proud of any of the other Wildhearts that overcome a personal fear or challenge. And that's also the reason I like working out together and hope we all make it through the workout or everyone's own personal challenge!

So yeah for all of us! :)
Stay tuned for the next Wildheart of the Month!